Our Newest American Monument Is a Masterpiece

On September 13, a new and immense public memorial will be unveiled in the heart of our nation’s capital commemorating America’s contribution to World War I. Designed by master sculptor Sabin Howard, the memorial is perhaps the greatest work of public art commissioned this century. The massive bronze sculpted relief, named A Soldier’s Journey, will depict a single soldier’s progression through the war, visually narrating America’s reluctant entry into the fracas engulfing Europe.

Sculpture is an art form uniquely suited to collective commemoration. Consider America’s history and heroes chronicled in metal and stone: the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. To erect a sculpted memorial is to make a statement: “We will remember.” Bronze, stone, marble, steel—the very matter of sculpture wills its permanence. 

To forge a collective memory is the sacred responsibility entrusted to the sculptor commissioned to create a public memorial. The purpose of his art is to direct a nation’s gaze back over its past with reverence and gratitude; it is also to cast our values, ideals, and faith irrevocably into the future. Artistic public monuments like A Soldier’s Journey bridge past, present, and future, forging a common identity. “I am my memory,” remarked St. Augustine, “there I meet myself, I recall what I am, and what I have done.” What is true for the individual is true for a people. To walk the hallowed precincts of the National Mall is to meet America, to share its memories—to recall what it is and what it has done. 

We live in an age that prefers to forget. This is not only because our attention spans are calibrated to the evanescent flickerings of a screen, to a barrage of quickly forgotten tweets and disappearing images. These are merely symptoms. The deeper moral malady is the malaise of memory—of the will to forget. Today, the very notion of a collective memory, a shared identity, or a common life is met with deep suspicion. And so, we live in an age that tears down its public monuments. 

The soon-to-be-unveiled National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., serves to resist such willed amnesia. America’s contribution to the war in Europe was immense: 4.7 million Americans served in the trenches and battlefields across Western Europe, and over 116,000 gave their lives in the various theaters of war. And yet, this staggering national sacrifice receives only a fraction of the attention given to the American Civil War fought fifty years earlier or to World War II. Indeed, World War I is the only major conflict of the modern era not represented by a great national monument. 

To remedy such apparent widespread nescience, Pershing Park was chosen by Congress as the site in which to erect the moving new memorial. The park is prominently located next to the National Mall and down the street from the White House. It is named after Gen. John J. Pershing, the dashing commander of the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. A statue of the intrepid general has long stood in the eponymously named park, but a fitting tribute to the millions who served in the Great War had been lacking. 

A Soldier’s Journey will be a formidable sight, imbuing Pershing Park with its dramatic story. The sculpture’s five bronze reliefs—a “movie in bronze,” as Howard describes it—will total 58 feet in length and 10 feet in height. As we proceed along the five distinct reliefs, we witness the solider engage with thirty-eight individual figures in diverse settings. Perhaps no art form is as paradoxical as sculpture: It seeks to infuse dynamism, movement, and vitality into a medium that would appear wholly unsusceptible to life. And yet, Pershing Park will now pulse with life as the drama of Howard’s historical masterpiece recounts the memory of the Great War to future generations. 

In the first scene, we witness the unnamed soldier saying goodbye to his wife and daughter. In the second, he begins—full of muster and confidence—to march in arms with his brothers toward war. The center of the pentaptych, and the climax of the monument, captures the dramatic moment when the solider, rifle in hand, leaps from the trench, urging his men forward directly into enemy fire. The fourth panel pivots to a somber reflection; the soldier’s melancholic gaze falls upon the carnage and loss all around, on the wasted limbs and ruined lives. The final panel sees our solider return home, handing his daughter his helmet. Like all great epics, Howard’s monument is the story of a hero who journeys away from home, is transformed by his experience, and, finally, returns—but now both home and hero are different. 

We can’t miss the artist’s message: This “Soldier’s Journey” is equally “America’s Journey.” The space of Pershing Park that Howard’s sculpture makes sacred invites visitors to enter more deeply into our nation’s memory and make its journey our own. In Howard’s sculpture we contemplate the immense sacrifices, heroism, and the indomitable spirit and glory that marked America’s contribution to a European war initiated two and a half years earlier. At the same time, we are asked to reflect on the absurd, inestimable loss of life, the senseless butchery, and stupid arrogance that drives the carnage of war. 

There is no people without a common memory. Sabin Howard’s magnificent sculpted masterpiece will join the pantheon of American monuments and will, like them all, insist—but with new stridence appropriate to our forgetful age—“We will remember.” 

Dr. Gerald P. Boersma is professor of theology at Ave Maria University. 

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Relief by Sabin Howard, image found on Picryl via Public Domain. Image cropped.